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The Last Jedi: Here There Be Spoilers


AndrewJ

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1 hour ago, felice said:

The "kills you if you try" line would have carried more weight if they hadn't had Snoke literally wiping the floor with Hux over presumably interstellar distances earlier in the film. After Snoke demonstrating that sort of power at that sort of range on a whim, the idea that projecting a mere illusion would be enough to drain Luke to death seems a bit odd.

Plus Snoke does astral projection to both Rey and Ren to connect them.  Doesn't kill him there.  He's just more powerful than Luke I guess because...

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But Rey and Ren weren't actually manifested at the others location. Their minds were bridged rather than astral projection to each other - they saw the other present at their own location and no one else could see them. Luke manifested an image at the location that gave him awareness of the location and the ability to interact with others (just not physically) there, and everyone there saw him and thought he was actually present. That's an order of magnitude more than a mental link.

My understanding of what Ren says Rey couldn't be doing (because it would kill her) is actually projecting herself there like that, not the mind link that was going on.

And that's before you get into the possibility of him broadcasting the entire thing to all force sensitive people in the galaxy (which isn't confirmed)

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2 hours ago, Corvinus said:

In a way it was, since the exact same music was playing, on purpose, you know to get those nostalgia feels. But the two are different as in the old one the Falcon was heading towards its target, while here it was luring TIE fighters away from allies and into tight spaces.

This is just what makes it worse for me.  Not only are they mimicking the Death Star reactor core run, they are playing the exact same music.  It's like the movie creators are telling me to "feel nostalgic" at this given moment.  This is almost as bad as having a laugh track during a sitcom telling me when to laugh.

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5 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Eh, didn't Ren get rain on him at one point?

I didn't notice that if he did. I did have kids distracting me at times though so maybe that's just me. I remember them making a deal out of each seeing their own surroundings, and the camera 'switches' to each point of view showing the other in their location.

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EDIT: Woh, best not post a response to a comment that happened seven pages back. This thread moves quick.

I thought the movie was pretty consistent with most of the other Star Wars films on hyperspace travel. The Force Awakens is the odd one out, but that's typical for Abrams' "slam a bunch of cool scenes together with good pacing and mystery box stuff even if the plot is a pile of bad contrivances and breaks the setting" (such as with the interstellar transporter in Star Trek 2009).

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41 minutes ago, Rubicante said:

This is just what makes it worse for me.  Not only are they mimicking the Death Star reactor core run, they are playing the exact same music.  It's like the movie creators are telling me to "feel nostalgic" at this given moment.  This is almost as bad as having a laugh track during a sitcom telling me when to laugh.

It's not the Death Star core run music!

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Wow, so many great responses since my last post. Kalbear, Rockroi, Darth Richard, PolishGenius, you all make great arguments that are far superior to my rambling. And all of you say things I more or less agree with, BUT I also am still conflicted and  have a negative response to certain things pretty much everybody said. The response to this movie seems to be like Rashoman---we all saw the same thing but have different, passionate interpretations of what we saw and pretty much all of them may stand up and be correct! 

 

That's great art, I suppose--like Empire, this one may turn out to be a true film classic, and follow in Empire's footsteps that way. 

 

Speaking of Rashoman--I've been trying to pin down what it was the most I didn't like about Luke's arc and it was that little Rashoman piece. What really happened with Ren, what drove Luke to the point where he was standing over his nephew, saber in hand, ready to murder him as he slept in cold blood. What I was trying to explain in my big long ramble yesterday was this was not only against every tenet of the Jedi code but an especially powerful betrayal of character from this man in particular. And Luke coming back as Force ghost a la Ben in ROTJ won't cut it for me. I think we need a real answer. the Luke/"cray old Ben" motif is obvious in this film, Luke died as Ben did, standing passively and not striking back as he met his fate. He even quotes Ben, I don't know were people are saying this is a new and revolutionary Jedi act; old Obi-wan did it before and Luke was drawing on his memories of that. I grew up trying to analyse Alec Guiness's mysterious little grin as his eyes dart from Luke and Leia back to Vader and it didn't become clear: "Ha. That's your son and daughter right there, and they're going to defeat you. You think that by kiliing me you've won, well I'm saving their live. You've lost." Of course we later find out that ben/Obi-wan's hope is that Luke Kill Vader: "I can't kill my own father." "then the Emperor has already won. You were our only hope." And then Luke comes to realize by ROTJ that killing Vader will not be the answer b/c then  he'd be no better than him but just perpetuate the cycle. Or is it simply the perverse longing for family. those pers attachments again. 

 

So here's my partial answer. I wondered why Ren has been so underwhelming as a villain until this film. Here's the answer: The whiny, tantrum-throwing man-boy is very much like Luke himself. I forgot which poster suggested that Luke still was that whiny teenager who never got to Tosche Station etc. In fact, it's possible that Luke recognized a younger version of himself in Ben Solo: "that could have been me, had I been unlucky enough to have to grow up with all the Skywalker family baggage and sense  my potential Force power to boot."  Luke of course had a peaceful anonymous childhood on Tatooine until he was 18. He had one parent figure, Beru, who was kind and loving to him, even if Owen was not. He knew nothing of his heritage and spent his days as a farmer, racing speeders and hanging out in town with his friends, and had the droids not crashed on Tatooine he would have remained anonymous, Ben or no. Of course it wasn't all milking the blue milk cows--he hated his boring life when he got older and longed to get away, and of course he had to shut himself off from his Force powers from an early age at Beru's urging. (People ask how it was possible for Luke to block out the Force on Ach-to. Very easy. he learned  to do it as a child. In a way, in this film he came full circle, he was back to where he started, except on a beautiful lush place instead of a desert where he could milk the cows himself instead of having to drink that horrible GMO stuff you had to buy in a store on Tatooine! J/K)

But he never got the chance to turn into someone like Ren b/c so much happened to him in such a short time and it tempered the teen Luke...though it only buried him, as this film shows, not killed him. God, I hated the self-pity: my first reaction to "I came here to die" was: "well dammit Luke, there's your saber. Take it out, turn it on, lay it on the ground, and f***g fall on it. You want the Jedi to end, you have a death wish, so what are you waiting for?" (Which still makes me wonder why he planted the saber with Maz...how could Ren know who Rey's parents were...and how did she forget...this still has to be explained.)

 

 Now compare this to what Ben Solo had to grow up with, in the middle of the galactic conflict, with famous parents,  what expectations were placed upon him,  having full knowledge of his heritage AND sensing he had a future in it. It's possible that Luke anticipated this and sensed these possibiltity from Ren at an early age and tried to watch over him as Ben did to him and then made the decision to train him so that he wouldn't..well, become him. Of course that failed. Like meets like and sparks fly, I've seen this in my own family! We all have! 

I am glad that we got to see a vision of Luke in the prime of his life, neither young nor yet old, as Ben Solo's master. (I'd love to know who they used as a body double for Mark in that, some shots had to be his head on CG'd onto another  body, I know Mark lost a lot of weight but he looked awfully thin in the fight! I don't know, that may have been him fighting, I doubt it though.) And Luke's "see ya around, kid," was brilliant, not only did he know it would drive his nephew fricking crazy by evoking his father Han, but he was also expressing the possibility that Ren might turn back as Anakin did and die in the Light, in case he would "see him around".

 

So it'll be interetsting how the Ren/Rey showdown might have weight and  gravitas if JJ keeps alive the notion that Rey is no-one?

 

I guess if I had answers or the opportunity to have them I'd feel more comfortable. The prequels were about Obi-wans failure with Anakin, with the conflict arising from Palply taking advantage of Anakin's need to protect his wife and who he was loyal to. if any films in the future deal with this, what might have turned Ben?

 

It's funny, the older I get and going back and watching the OT how my opinions change. When I was a kid I felt Uncle Owen was an ogre but now I feel sorry for him and sympathize with him, in his own gruff way he loved Luke and was trying to protect him by trying to keep him ingnorant And Obi-wan's conversation with Luke in the hut, how much he was holding back, how nervous and  uncomfortable he was, how awkward the conversation. And the "certain POV." BOY do I know about "a certain POV" as an adult! 

 

I suspect people will grow up and grow older and argue about this film as well and see new things in it also. 

 

 

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I am deeply unimpressed by the trend of denigrating the earlier films to prop up TLJ. It makes me wonder if there was less to the movie than I thought, if this is the route others who liked it feel they have to take to justify their enjoyment.

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